Help THANKS wow* 1/21/18 RUMC

Help THANKS wow*

1/21/18 RUMC

As the little boy received a cookie from grandma, mom prompted, what’s the magic word? You know what she meant. We have all said it to our kids at one time or another. The little boy looked grandma right in the eye and lovingly said, ABRACADABRA!

Certainly, A magic word, but not THE magic word

What magic word did the mother want to hear? <<<thank you>>>

Abracadabra doesn’t make Anne Lamott’s list of essential prayer, but thanks does.

Last week we talked about the fact that praying HEEEEEELP should be our natural instinct, but because pride or shame or doubt, we don’t pray for help as often as we should. Did you take time to grab on to you prayer knot and pray for help either for yourself or for someone else this week? I hope so.

Today we move to thanks. Now “thanks” is just a short cut version for “O GRACIOUS GOD ALMIGHTY OF THE UNIVERSE WHO DESERVES ALL THANKS AND PRAISE AND ADORATION AND HONOR AND GLORY… WE YOUR UNDESERVIG CREATURES HUMBLY RAISE OUR THANKFUL HEARTS TO YOU GRATEFUL RESPONSE TO YOUR INFINITE GENEROSITY.” Did you get all of that? <<<>>> that’s OK we can abbreviate it to “thanks!”

Let’s take a look at our story for today. You will find it on page__________ of your pew bibles or in Luke 17:11-19 of your Bibles if you brought your own today.

Luke begins by locating the story in an interesting region. The border between Galilee and Samaria. Nazareth and Capernaum and the sea of Galilee are in the region of Galilee. To the south is Judea where Jerusalem and Bethlehem are located. Between them, however lies the land we call Samaria. That’s where the hated Samaritans lived.

              .

Samaritans worshipped the same God, but believed that the proper place to worship was Mount Nebo, of course the Jews believed mount Zion. Kind of like arguing over whether we should worship sitting on the right side of the sanctuary, or the left. But there’s more.

The Samaritans had intermarried, so not only were they perverting the worship of God, they were part gentile. For Jesus to be walking the borderlands between them was like walking the fence line that separated the Hatfields and McCoys. As Jesus is approaching a village, he is met by ten people who had leprosy.

Leprosy was a category of illnesses. The thing they had common. They were all disturbing to look at. In addition to the medical problem there was an emotional recoil, and since the diseases were thought to be a direct result of sin there was the religious issue of being unclean. With the medical. Emotional and religious elements combined, the lepers were doomed to a life on the fringes of society on the fringes of the city, and the temple.

If a leper was approaching a crowded area, they had to shout “Unclean!” to warn the people that they were coming. If they wanted to get someone’s attention to ask for a handout, they had to shout from a distance, so as not to contaminate the person. That’s what these ten lepers do when they see Jesus. Keeping their distance, they shout to him, asking for mercy.

They had no hope of being cured, but they had hope that Jesus and the disciples would have some spare cash. They didn’t ask for a miracle, they didn’t look for a miracle, but that’s what they got. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests, which was the Biblically mandated way to prove that you no longer had leprosy, which was almost unheard of.

On the way to the priests, they were healed. Not immediately, but on the way. I don’t know how far they had gone, but one came back to say “O GRACIOUS GOD ALMIGHTY OF THE UNIVERSE …” No that’s not it. He came back to say “thanks.” More than that he came back making a ruckus and throwing himself at Jesus feet. He was so grateful he didn’t care what kinds of laws he was breaking.

Then the real bombshell… he was a Samaritan. Most of the people around Jesus would have been asking why he came back, after all he was just a Samaritan and even worse, apparently, he didn’t care about the laws or ritual cleanliness. He obviously had not yet been declared clean by the priests.

But Jesus had a better question: why didn’t the other nine do the same?

Kory Wilcoxson says we shouldn’t be so hard on the other 9. They probably all had legitimate reasons. He suggests, “for example, the first was so happy he was healed that he simply forgot. The second was just following orders. He was determined to do what he was told by carrying out Jesus’ command to see the priest. The third was too busy rushing off to be reunited with family and friends and to share the good news of his healing with others. The fourth leper, after years of suffering, felt he deserved something good to happen to him, and saw no need to offer thanks for it. The fifth was so overwhelmed by the miracle itself that he didn’t pay attention to one who provided it. The sixth just knew there was a logical explanation for the healing, and that Jesus had nothing to do with it. The seventh leper? He was just plain frightened by what happened and frightened of Jesus. The eighth was secretly offended because Jesus took away his identity, and he didn’t know how to live life without leprosy. As for the ninth leper, his life had been full of such misery and disrespect that he stopped saying, “Thank you” to anyone a long time ago. In our own lives, we can usually come up with at least nine different reasons why we don’t stop and say, ‘Thank you.’ “

Can you relate to any of those? I can at least from time to time. O try to be a grateful person, but it is easy to succumb to the illusion that when something good happens to us, that we worked hard and earned it anyway… why would we go back to say thank you? Or it is just the return on our investment of time in the church. Or Finally something good happened, it’s about time. Those are probably my problems, how about you? I’ll bet I’m not the only one that fits in better with the 9 than with the one. What are your reasons for forgetting to say thank you.

Too often we are like the little kid at Christmas who opens each gift, looks at it a few seconds, and then tosses it aside, ready for the next present. Do we treat God’s blessings that way?

Perhaps we need to just stop today. Stop and step back to look at our lives and world. Let’s take a minute to look at Our jobs, our health, our family, our possessions, our crops, the sunshine. the food provided by creation and if you are like me, you’ll realize that our tiny little gratitude is dwarfed by the magnitude of God’s grace.

Do we have to be thankful? Well, no it is not required anywhere. But if it were required, it would not be true thankfulness. Thankfulness grows from an attitude of gratitude, which flows from an awareness of how blessed we really are.

So, the place to start is being aware. Being ware of some of the blessings God has given us. Start with life, and health, and family and friends, and church and the miraculous ability to hear his word proclaimed. How about instead of complaining about all the traffic and instead give thanks for having transportation? Or instead of impatiently tapping our foot and silently berating the slow clerk, to pause in the long line at the grocery to give thanks for the abundance of food we have. Or to take a moment while paying a medical bill for the skill of the doctors and nurses who care for us. Or instead of being frustrated that the dishes pile up, how about being thankful that we have food to make the dishes dirty.

Awareness if the place to start… just beginning to restore our sight to the blessing that surround us every single day. Forcing ourselves to say thank you to even those things we think are a little silly.

Then gratitude begins to grow in our hearts. The habit of seeing the blessings and giving thanks will begin to grow into an attitude of gratitude. Our hearts only get there, however, if our brains go back over and over again the blessings we have received. Only if our lips practice saying Thank You over and over again.

Ann Lamot writes

“Gratitude runs the gamut from shaking your head and saying, “Thanks, wow, I appreciate it so much,” for your continued health, or a good day at work, or the first blooms of daisies in the public park, to saying, “Thanks, that’s a relief,” when it’s not the transmission, or an abscess, or an audit notice from the IRS. “Thanks” can be the recognition that you have been blessed mildly, or with a feeling as intense as despair at the miracle of having been spared. You say Thank you thank you thank you thank- you: My wife is going to live. We get to stay in this house. They found my son: he’s in jail, but he’s alive; we know where he is and he’s safe for tonight.” 

Finally, gratitude in our hearts begins to show up in our behavior. The doxology, which is a hymn of thanksgiving, that we sing every week, begins to leak into our daily lives, and we find ourselves spontaneously breaking out in “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” And eventually… after our heads become aware, and our hearts become grateful, our spirits become a living doxology to the God who deserves our praise and thanks.

Let’s return to our story for a minute. The Leper is bowing

“Rise and go, your faith has made you well.”

There is more here than meets the eye. On the way to the priest the leper was cleansed. But Jesus declared him well… whole… Completely healed and restored to the image God intended him to be.

10 were cleansed, but only one was make whole or made well… how? By being that living doxology. By living gratitude. By saying thanks, he was not only cleansed, but completely healed.

Take out your prayer knot. The yarn I gave you last week. I want you to fold it in half and then come about ½ way between the middle and the knot you tied last week. And I want you to tie two knots nest to each other. The one knot represented tying a knot in the end of our rope and hanging on. These two represent the double blessing; one the original blessing and two the blessing that comes from living a of giving thanks for a blessing and being blessed even more by having an attitude of gratitude… by simply saying thank you. Go home and say thank you over rand over this week. He a living doxology.

Largely inspired by a sermon by Kory Wilcoxson  found at http://www.crestwoodchristian.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2-Thanks.pdf

On weeks like this, I am grateful to colleagues who share their who share their work on line.  I only pray that someday a colleague will find homiletic inspiration in something I post here. 

HELP!!!!! Help, thanks, wow Reinbeck UMC 1/14/18

HELP!!!!! Help, thanks, wow

Reinbeck UMC

1/14/18

Most of us know this much about Jonah. He spent time in the belly of a fish but there is more to his story you might not know. Jonah is not just an average person. He is a prophet of God. He is a preacher with a special call to speak a particular message from God’s to the people… in his opinion that meant Israelites. You know, God’s chosen people.

When God called Jonah to go to Nineva. His response… “NO WAY!” Now don’t be too hard on Jonah. You might have the same response when you discover that Nineva is in modern day Iraq.  Have you heard about the battle with Isis for control of the town of Mosul? That’s what Nineveh is called today. I’m afraid that if God called me to go to Mosul and preach the Christian gospel, I just might find myself in the belly of a fish somewhere. And if I found myself in the smelly belly of a fish, I’d certainly pray for help like I have never prayed before.

That’s what Jonah did. The passage John just read for us is Jonah’s prayer from the fish. Check out page 800 in your pew Bible. I did a lot of research into the Hebrew language used there and there is a better translation.  HELP! That is the best translation ever HELP!!

We have all been in the belly of the fish. It is dark, it stinks, we are in ick up to our knees (or sometimes up to our chins), we can’t believe we are there, we can’t figure out how we got here, let alone imagine how we are going to get out. We feel alone and powerless and hopeless, and we don’t know where to turn… here only one logical response scream as loud as you can… HELP!!!! SOMEONE HELP!!!! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME????

The instinct to cry out for help is right in our genetic code. What is the first thing a baby does when they need something…anything… cry out. They don’t know what they need. They don’t know who can help. They don’t have a plan. They don’t blame anyone. They just cry.

Somewhere along the way we stumble into thinking “I can do it myself,” “I shouldn’t have to ask for help.” “I am an independent 2-year-old, or teenager, or adult and I don’t need anyone’s help.” That works pretty well…until it doesn’t. And then we are right back to crying out for help. We cry, “Mommy!” “Daddy!” “Teacher!” “Doctor!” “Plumber!” “Preacher!” “Anyone who can help!” It is just part of who we are.

And sometimes we find ourselves in such a deep hole we pull out the big guns and cry out to God. Although OMG it is used much to casually in our language, when we are in deep trouble, a deep heartfelt Oh My God... might be all we have.

 But what I want to tell you today is that’s all we need.

The belly of the fish comes in a lot of different shapes. I’ve rarely felt so helpless as I did during Amber’s heart surgery. HELP! I have rarely felt so out of control as I did the day Richie was born and they loaded him up in the neonatal ICU ambulance and whisked him off to Iowa City. HELP! I have rarely felt so defeated as I did the day the church burned down. HELP! I have rarely felt as alone as I did when I got laid off for the first time. HELP!

 Those are the gut felt and honest of all prayers.

Anne Lamott who wrote a little book called HELP, THANKS, WOW You’ll find it at the top of your KNOWW, GROW, GO sheet. Ms. Lamot defines prayer as “reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold.” Prayer is not at is essence words. Praying help is the heart or the gut reaching out, grasping for, yearning for, begging for something outside of the belly of the fish. For some people that is fate, or nature, or human intervention. When you are that deep in the belly of the fish. The only real answer is calling out to God. Prayer is “reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by God.”

Simple right? And prayer should be simple and it is… getting to the point of praying HELP is a different matter. Why is it so hard to pray help?

•            Perhaps pride is the number one reason. We will try anything and everything we can think of until we run out of good ideas or even bad ideas… before we admit we need help and turn to prayer.

•            The second reason is the opposite of pride. It is a feeling of being unworthy. Thinking God has more important things to worry about than me. Occasionally someone in the hospital says, “You didn’t have to come… you are so busy… I want to tell them, ‘You’re in the HOSPITAL! This is exactly what I’m supposed to be busy doing.’” I don’t, but there is something in us that says we are not important enough to get help.

•            One the final reason I think praying for help might be hard for us is we doubt that God can or will help. Our brains sometimes tell us that that

–            God caused our suffering... Don’t believe it.

–            Or we have the idea that God doesn’t care… Don’t believe it.

–            Or we have the notion that God can’t do anything for us. Don’t believe it!

We have to jump over those hurdles and just cry out “Help me God!”

Let me point out two lessons from Jonah’s story. Take a look at Jonah in the belly of the fish on page 800 of your pew Bible.… In verse 2 he says, “I called to the LORD out of my distress. But how long did he wait?  This was his last resort. In verse 7 we read ““7 As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD.” It was after three days and with his last dying breath that Jonah called out to God.

When I was at one of the lowest points in my life, when we left the church and moved to Bettendorf without a plan, or jobs, or anything… I’m sorry to say It took years…. And a thousand little tiny steps before I was able to open up to God and cry “help.” It took folks from the church doing a hundred kind things for us…it took our friends from the church inviting me to do kind things for others with them… It took my going back to worship, not for me, but to be a good example for Richie (and the crack began to open) …. It took being rooked into chaperoning a mission trip (a little bigger crack) It took hitting rock bottom and realizing that I had no options but to cry out to God. And the light began to shine through e crack. Even then I didn’t have the strength to reach out… I opened a crack and God’s grace began to shine through… and it wasn’t long before God reached in and saved me again.

Lamont says, “Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to be helped by something, some force, some friends, some something. These prayers say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t see where I’m going. I’m getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched. Help.’”

God will still be there if you wait, that’s not the issue… but how bad does it have to get?  Just do it.

Just do it and TRUST. It is hard to trust. But when we have run out of ideas, and excuses, and blaming, and cursing what is left but to trust someone else. Trust that God didn’t put you in this bad place. That is not the way God works. Trust that God cares… and he does. Trust that God wants to help… and he does… trust that God can help… and God can!

Notice the second half of the 2nd verse in Jonah’s prayer. Jonah almost sounds surprised! “and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry.”

I believe every time we can trust God actually deepens our relationship with God. When we pray, “OK, God. I’ve got nothing left. Did you really mean it when you said you loved me no matter what? Well, here I am, warts and all.” It’s at that moment, in that moment of helplessness and. vulnerability, and trust that our healing begins.

One more thought. Our prayers for help are not always for ourselves. Often, we pray prayers of help for others. How does that work? How do our vulnerability and our trust in praying to God help someone else?

In NASCAR or competitive cycling, they call it drafting. Geese do the same thing. The front racer faces the headwinds so those behind can have an easier time because of the front rider’s work. When the front rider nor goose needs a break someone else steps in. Isn’t that a great image for prayer in the church? I’ll stand here in prayer and face the headwind for you when you are weak… then when I need help, you step up and pray against the headwind for me. Praying prayers of help for one another is one of the things that defines who we are as the church.

What is your belly of the fish right now? Think about it. If everything is good right now think about a time when it wasn’t or think about a friend who needs help right now. Take your piece of yarn. Tie one knot about ¼ of the way up the strand. Fold it in half and fold it in half again to estimate ¼ of the strand. And tie a knot right there. And pray for help. Feel that knot and pray for help. Hold on to that knot like your life depends on it and pray for help. You know they say when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. That is kind of what we are doing. Tie one knot there. If you want you can make it a double knot so you can feel it better, but not two knots next to one another. Bring it back next week and we’ll do that. Today only one knot. And pray for help. Now take it home and hold on to that knot and pray for God’s help for you or for others.

Remember there is “KNOT” one thing that can separate us from God’s love. KNOT angels KNOT principalities, KNOT life, KNOT death. KNOT anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s to pray “help.” It’s a good and indispensable prayer. “Help!” For now, and evermore. Amen.

God’s Message for You January 7, 2018 RUMC

God’s Message for You

January 7, 2018

RUMC

Your head should be spinning just little bit.

2 weeks ago we were at Christmas Eve, getting ready for the incarnation of God as a tiny little baby in Bethlehem.

Today, it is like we have stepped out of a time machine after being flung into the future. Suddenly the baby, who was just born, is 30 years old being baptized in the Jordan. Is this the Holy Spirit time machine or what?

Let me reassure you, there is no time machine here.  Jesus and John the Baptist were born about 4 BC.  Then the story has a lot of holes in it.

The Bible tells us four things about Jesus childhood.

·         He was dedicated at the temple at 40 days old.

·         He was visited by wise men sometime between the ages of 40 days and 2 years, usually we guess a year old.

·         The family fled to Egypt for a while.

·         When he was 12, Jesus was so engrossed discussing holy things with the priests that he missed the caravan back to Nazareth. After frantically looking for him, Mary and Joseph found him in the temple.

And then there is the 18 year leap to the baptism.

The time machine illusion comes because of the liturgical calendar. We celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December, Epiphany (the coming of the wise men) 12 days later on January 6, and the Baptism of our Lord the first Sunday after January 6th, which would be today.

To tell you the truth, the baptism of Jesus we celebrate today is more closely connected to Christmas 1987 (30 years ago) than Christmas 2017, There is no time machine here, but the liturgical calendar drastically compresses Jesus life. He lived about 33 years, but in just over 4 months the liturgical calendar will have him born, baptized, dead and resurrected. 

So if we set the question of time travel aside, we have a great story of Jesus being baptized by his cousin John in the Jordan River. 

We have to start with the question, “What was John doing?”  We know that ritual cleansing was not a new idea in the Jewish community. The Old Testament law prescribed washing as a means of ridding oneself of impurities, or uncleanness that might have been received by contact with unclean animals, human blood or even non-Israelites.

As the Greek empire moved through the region, there were Greeks who wanted to become Jewish.  Ritual cleansing was used, along with circumcision to make them part of the Jewish people.

Finally, there was a desert-dwelling community south of Jerusalem call Qumran.  You might have heard of the Dead Sea scrolls.  The scrolls came from this community. Some say that John the Baptist, who did not live far from the community, and whose ministry seems to have been at the south end of the Jordan River, was a member of the Qumran community.  If not a member, I think it is likely that he was influenced by them. Their manual for the community read that those wishing to enter Qumran "shall go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of Him; as it is written, Prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a path for our God." That sounds almost exactly like John the Baptist, doesn’t it?

So John may have had a little different understanding of baptism than the general Jewish community. Instead of being a superficial cleansing of impurities, John preached a baptism of repentance. In other words, it was more than cleansing the outside of impurities, it was a symbol of an inward change.  It was a way of submitting the soul or the heart to all the ways of God.

That is what Jesus came to do. He came to submit himself to the work he was sent to do.  “Not my will but thine be done.”  He would say at the end of his life.  For Jesus, this was not just something he did for show.

 It was a way of giving himself wholly to the work God has sent him to accomplish.

We need to do the same thing. Although none of us are Jesus, just like Jesus we were born for a particular purpose. We were born to love God and love neighbor. Jesus says on these two hangs the whole of the law and the prophets. That is why each and every person is born. Not everyone, however, focuses on that one purpose.

Clyde Tombaugh, dedicated his life to the one purpose of discovery. "He studied tens of thousands of star images in pairs under the dual microscope. It often took three days to scan a single pair. It was exhausting, eye-cracking work--in his own words, 'brutal, tediousness.' After 20 million images on February 18, 1930, he saw that to which he had dedicated his life.  He discovered the planet Pluto.

John Baker is the best of what they call “hard men;” Rock climbers who scale sheer smooth vertical walls of rock.  His skill has not come easily. It takes commitment, dedication, and training. When John isn't climbing, he's often to be found in his California home hanging by his fingertips to strengthen his arms and hands. That is a life focused on one thing.

Lou Gehrig was such a clumsy ball player that the boys in his neighborhood would not let him play on their team. But he was committed. He threw caught and hit thousands of baseballs… He did not give up. Eventually, his life’s focus earned the “sultan of swat” a spot in baseball's Hall of Fame.

Maybe you know someone whose life is focused on money, or power, or fishing, or work, or just about anything. There is nothing wrong with those things unless they divert us from the real reason we are here… what if we focused our lives to loving God and loving neighbor as seriously as Tombaugh looking for that one flickering star among millions, with as much dedication as a rock climber hanging from his fingertips for hours at a time, or Babe Ruth hitting ball, after ball, after ball?

Baptism and baptism renewal are the lens through which we focus our lives on the one purpose for which we were born. Sure, we all have jobs and families, and hobbies and things to which we dedicate significant amounts of time…. But baptism is the one lens that focuses us on the one thing more important than all the rest put together. Loving God and loving neighbor.

Jesus came to be baptized as a way of focusing his life on that one track for which he was born: to love and save the world. We renew our baptism as a way of focusing our lives on that one track for which he was born: to be more and more like Jesus loving God and loving neighbor.

But baptism is not just something we do, or something the church does, or something the pastor does for us.  It is something God does.

In Jesus’ baptism, something very special happened. Each of the Gospels tells of a dove descending on Jesus and three of them repost God speaking. Matthew reports God’s words as a testimony to the crowd, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Matthew, of course, was more interested than the others in proving that Jesus was who he said he was.  Mark and Luke agree, however, that the voice said: “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  The difference is subtle but important to me. In Mark and Luke the voice speaks to Jesus alone saying, “You are my beloved son.” Why?

I think of a youth I had in Bettendorf. We read this passage at our Sunday evening Revolution service one week. It might have been Baptism of our Lord Sunday.  I noticed this big tough kid getting very uncomfortable. This was a kid who had a tough life. He had been kicked out of the house, more because of his parents’ problems than anything he did. He lived on the streets.  To his credit, he stayed in school and when I knew Nate, he was bouncing back and forth between homeless shelters and friend’s couches. Eventually this tough as nails kid started to get red around his eyes. He started to tear up. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I made a special point of taking him back to the shelter that night, which I often did.

On the way back asked him what he was thinking during the service. He started to tear up again.  It was a long time before he said anything.  We sat in front of the shelter quietly as he wept. Eventually, he said, “I have always wanted someone to say that.”  I waited and he sobbed into his dirty sleeve. He said, “I always wanted to hear my dad say that.”  I asked what he meant. He said, “I’m proud of you. I always wanted my dad to say I’m proud of you.”

We continued to talk about all the things for which I was proud of him, but I knew it wasn’t the same.

2 ½ ago when my dad was dying, we each had an opportunity over his last weeks to visit with him one on one.   I got to say the kinds of things we never seem to get around to saying. But the most important thing Dad said to me was “I’m proud of you kid.” It’s not that he never said it before, but that is the main thing he wanted me to know that day.  I remember the night before he died when he could no longer speak, sitting in the chapel at St Luke’s hospital just aching to hear him say it one more time.

Don’t you suppose that’s what Jesus needed to hear?  We all need to know that someone is proud of us, but given what was in front of him don’t you suppose he needed more than ever to know that his dad was proud of him.

I have performed dozens of baptisms and I have never heard God’s voice from a cloud like that.  But internally, I remember hearing that voice at my ordination and I hear that voice again every time I renew my baptism. “I’m proud of you. You are my beloved child.”

Don’t we all need to hear that?  But maybe you need to hear something else. What does God need to say to you today?

·         I’m proud of you

·         You are my beloved child.

·         I love you anyway.

·         You are forgiven.

·         Well done good and faithful servant.

·         I’m glad you’re here.

·         Don’t worry, It will be OK

·         Or maybe God is saying, “How long before you do what I have asked you to do?”

I don’t know…

What does God have to say to you today?   What do you need to hear from God today?

Listen… Listen for that voice… listen for that word from God… as we share baptism renewal today. As you live each day in God’s presence… listen for a word of comfort, encouragement, hope, or even challenge… whatever that voice says,  I assure you that behind the words are one important message… You are God’s beloved child and God’s proud of you.